“Right, like Michelangelo’s David or Winged Victory of Samothrace. They’re two of the most popular sculptures on earth, but it knocks me out if I imagine seeing them for the first time. I don’t ever want to get over it! I never want to get tired or bored of beauty and goodness. That would worry me,” she said. “I don’t like to use the word obsession lightly because obsessiveness is a real problem for some people, but I’m so in love with David’s right hand, down on his thigh. I love looking at it! You’re going to think I’m a weirdo, but I have an entire section of my secret art history Pinterest board dedicated just to close-ups of his oversized right hand.”
Photos of David’s right hand soothed Tallie—the tip of his middle finger touching his thigh, the snaking veins—imagining how the cool marble would feel. She liked thinking about holding David’s hand. She also loved his nose, his entire face, those haunting eyes holding hearts. That taut torso, perfect ass, and glorious contrapposto. Some nights when she couldn’t sleep, she listened to music and scrolled through her Pinterest. It was one way she took care of herself.
“We’ve already established you’re the best possible kind of weirdo,” Emmett said.
“Oh, have we, now?”
“Definitely,” he said before continuing. “Yeah, I’ve been overseas once. Paris for a short time when I was in high school, so I got to go to the Louvre and see the Nike, the Mona Lisa, the Venus de Milo.”
“That sounds lovely. I want to go to the Louvre someday and the Accademia Gallery in Florence to see David, although I’m afraid seeing it in real life would make me get Stendhal syndrome or…what’s it called?…hyperkulturemia? Seeing something like that in person can cause some people to have an art panic attack. Art attacks…art palpitations. I’d be the one to faint. It’s seventeen feet tall. Thinking about seeing it in real life wears me out.” Tallie put the back of her hand to her forehead, mimed a fainting spell.
She let her hand slide to her heart, racing a little faster from the conversation, which often happened when she talked about art. Her face got hot, and she wanted to burst out of her skin. Rubens syndrome. She had erotic postcards tacked to the wall next to her bed; they’d been hanging there for years, held above the lamp with flat metal pushpins, the gloss glowing every time the wide triangle of light shone up and out. In the past, they’d reminded her not only of romance and dreams but also of fantasies of a steamy anniversary vacation with Joel. The two of them going overseas to spend mornings in bed and entire days visiting art museums, dining al fresco, completely immersed in another culture and language. Perhaps a second honeymoon. Tallie had accepted that fantasy as bust but had recently surprised herself by considering going alone.
“Whenever I’m in an art museum, I feel like that scene from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, the one when Cameron is staring at Seurat’s A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte and it keeps zooming in and in and all meaning disappears. I like how nothing else matters when you’re looking at a painting…you can just forget the world completely,” he said. He’d curled his hands into loose fists and held them up together to one eye, closed the other, and looked through to Tallie.
“Absolutely. I love that scene…let’s watch it.”
She pulled up the movie from her digital library, clicking to the art museum scene: the instrumental cover of the Smiths’ “Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want.” Flashes of Hopper, Picasso. Cassatt. Gauguin. Pollock, Matisse. Cameron melting into the Seurat while Ferris and Sloane kiss in front of the night-blue stained glass of Marc Chagall’s America Windows.
When it was over, Emmett had tears in his eyes. Tallie said oh, no and apologized for unintentionally upsetting him. She turned the TV off.
“No. Please don’t. I wanted to see it. I’m okay. And maybe next time I’m in town we can go to your art museum together and try not to have art attacks,” he said, sniffing. Blinking and blinking. He reassured her he was okay once more.
“If you’re around Louisville on Sunday afternoon, I’ll take you. Our own A Sunday Afternoon in Louisville at the Speed Art Museum,” she said.
“We could roast a Sunday chicken and pretend like this is our real life?”
“Exactly. Then poof! Back to reality for me on Monday because I have to go to work.”
“Back to school?”
Tallie knew he was picturing her as a teacher in a high school classroom full of rowdy, colorfully shirted kids—a sugary, bubbling gumball machine of hormones and long limbs, acne and braces. She thought instead of the morning therapy appointments she had scheduled for Monday. One of her favorite clients, whom she’d watched courageously tackle and conquer her agoraphobia over the past two years; another with self-diagnosed attention-seeking issues and selfitis—an addiction to taking and posting selfies on social media. Then there was one new potential client—a black woman struggling with the stress of living in America and the long-lasting damaging effects of racism—who was coming in for an initial consult to see if they clicked. Tallie was looking forward to it and already feeling like they were a perfect match if their emails were any indication. She had black clients who specifically sought out a black therapist, needing that understanding and connection. The beating heart of her therapy practice was helping people feel less alone.